Just days after Iran’s president denounced Internet censorship as “cowardly,” six young Iranians were arrested and forced to repent on state television…for the grievous offense of proclaiming themselves to be “Happy in Tehran,” in a homemade music video they posted on YouTube…The arrest of the young dancers, and their televised public humiliation, angered Iranians at home and abroad…

U.S. Park Police arrested five people…at the Jefferson Memorial. Their offense? Dancing. The dancers were protesting an appeals court ruling…that the national monuments are places for reflection and contemplation — and that dancing distracted…

…Photographer Bénédicte Desrus spent six years…documenting Casa Xochiquetzal, a home in Mexico City for…retired sex workers…She only took photographs of the women who gave her permission and provided them with prints, which often inspired other women to participate…Desrus then teamed up with journalist Celia Gómez Ramos, who began interviewing and transcribing the residents’ stories. They eventually decided to publish…as…Las Amorosas Más Bravas (The Toughest Lovers)…

…34-year-old…Vanessa Gumataotao of Sacramento…was arrested on suspicion of prostitution…as well as child abuse and endangerment for allegedly using [a] 17-year-old [boy] as her pimp. The…boy was arrested on suspicion of pimping…

A top London solicitor who had sex with a Chinese law student [and sex worker]…has lost his claim for damages after she told his daughter and colleagues about previous affairs. The solicitor…identified only as AVB, sued the young sex worker, known as TDD, for breach of confidentiality…after she found information about past liaisons on his laptop. Senior…Justice Tugendhat…said TDD broke a duty she entered when she accepted money for sex. But…AVB…would not receive damages because although he experienced “some embarrassment” he “has suffered no real distress”…

[San Francisco cops busted] two…lemonade stands…the 11-year-old proprietor of one…was informed that simply giving away the fudge brownies and lemonade the police forbade her…to sell would result in a $1,500 fine…Not long after police cleansed the…area of unlawful lemonade dispensaries…they returned due to complaints about “a live band.” This stemmed…from a neighborhood tradition of setting up a drum kit during [a public event] and allowing local kids to keep the beat. At the time the police showed up, the unlicensed live bandmember was…a toddler…

…Bradley Ballard, a…schizophrenic [inmate at New York’s Rikers Island] died…after he was confined to his cell…for seven days for making a lewd gesture at a female guard…Denied…his medication, the agitated inmate tied a rubber band tightly around his genitals…Ballard was found naked and unresponsive on the floor, covered in feces, his genitals swollen and badly infected. He died at a hospital of…[massive systemic] infection…

Two [Atlantic City cops] have been arrested on charges they sexually assaulted a 16-year-old in separate incidents…Andre Corbin and…Ralph Pereira…were…[each] charged with…sexual assault…endangering the welfare of a child and official misconduct…

A man was killed by a mob…in…Burkina Faso, after being accused of making another man’s penis “disappear”…a local mechanic…claimed that his penis had been “stolen” by the second man, who was not from the district. The first man called the police. But by then…the residents decided to lynch the man in the middle of the street…

The acquittal of the 13 people “sex trafficking” fanatic Susan Trimarco implicated in her witch hunt provoked such an outcry among her disciples that two of the three judges were pushed into retirement, the third has been threatened with impeachment and the Argentine president swore to “reform” the judiciary because it is too objective and not sufficiently influenced by public opinion. A higher court then convicted ten of the 13 defendants on charges of running an “evil network of sexual exploitation…with…international connections, and satanic rituals.” Still think this hysteria is different from the Satanic Panic?

The California Sex Offender Management Board…[recommends] that lawmakers…overhaul registration laws so that some offenders can be removed from the list after 10 or 20 years. The list — which currently includes almost 100,000 registered offenders — is too large to be useful to law enforcement or the general public. Under current laws, all sex offenders must register for life regardless of the offense they committed…[the list] includes…almost 900 [people] who have not committed a sex-crime in more than half a century…Ninety-five percent of sex-crimes are committed by individuals who are not on the registry, and the existence of the registry has not worked as a deterrent…

…U.S. Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) said the debate over…immigration reform is prompting undocumented minors to enter the United States… “And…you know that some get sucked into sex slavery,” Gohmert said…adding…“This administration, and this Congress also, is complicit in helping lure people into sex trafficking”…

An international association of Catholic nuns has launched a public awareness campaign to combat human trafficking and prostitution during the World Cup in Brazil. The nuns will use social media, billboards and rallies…to draw attention to the heightened risk of exploitation…Sister Gabriella Bottani said…that for previous World Cups in Germany and South Africa, the level of “exploitation” had gone up by 30 per cent and 40 per cent respectively…Among past and upcoming initiatives will be…a torchlit procession in Brasilia…and handing out pamphlets at…beach resorts…

…police…invaded…a building where…prostitutes operated…in [the suburbs of]… Rio…Without a warrant, police…[arrested] more than 100 women…and seized their goods. Women were attacked and raped – police forced them to perform oral sex and put their hands on the women’s genitals…One woman…had…[her] whole week…[of] money…robbed, including any money to take the bus home…

Amnesty International has urged Northern Ireland’s politicians to ditch plans to criminalise the purchasing of sex. The human rights organisation wants a clause contained in a bill against human trafficking to be excised because…it would create a “hierarchy of criminal liability” among sex workers…Amnesty stressed it was not taking sides on the debate over sex work and prostitution, but said sex work and human trafficking were “two very complex social phenomena” that required different laws…

“Those who…sit on the fence do indeed side for a political party: The ruling party.” – Max Frisch

…Italy’s national statistics office, will include estimated dealings from drugs, arms trafficking and prostitution in its GDP figures from now on…This move should increase Italy’s economy by at least 1.3 per cent in the first year, helping it to comply with EU rules on indebtedness, which limit member countries to spending no more than 3 per cent of their GDP…the calculation would also include revenues from contraband tobacco and alcohol…The Bank of Italy estimated the value of the criminal economy at 10.9 per cent of GDP in 2012…The move…is motivated by the EU’s desire to measure its member countries’ economies more closely…

…community members carrying information and harm reduction supplies were threatened with arrest and were not allowed to communicate with sex workers…who had been…forcibly transported to Project ROSE…[which has] come under intense scrutiny because of a long list of rights violations…advocates from the Best Practices Policy Project and SWOP Phoenix traveled to the United Nations to raise concerns about these abuses to the Human Rights Committee…a group of social workers, Social Workers United for Justice, is petitioning the National Association of Social Workers (NASW) and the Council on Social Work Education (CSWE) to “demand an end to Arizona State University School of Social Work’s involvement with Project Rose” because it violates socials work’s core professional principles…

Nineteen-year-old Alyssa Funke…bought a shotgun, drove to her family’s boat, and killed herself there on April 14. Students at her former high school had outed her as the star of a “casting couch” porn video, and her parents say the subsequent online harassment contributed to her suicide. Funke…did her first and only porn video…earlier this year…Soon after the video went up, Funke started getting nasty Twitter and Facebook messages from students at her former high school in Minnesota, calling her a slut and worse…Funke’s parents said she had long suffered from depression, but they believe the harassment…played a major role in her [suicide]…

…discussion of whether the sex trade should be legalised [in China]…came to the fore…after Huang Haibo, a 39-year-old actor best known for his “nice everyman” roles, was arrested…for allegedly soliciting prostitutes…The news led to a surprising outpouring of sympathy on social media…after the crackdown in…Dongguan…[there were many] online comments like “Dongguan, hang in there” and “the public has your back”…

A South Carolina pastor has been accused of turning his Bible College into a forced labor camp for foreign students. Reginald Wayne Miller…made the teens toil for no or little pay for more than 50 hours a week while housing them in rooms without hot water, heating or air-conditioning. He…threatened to revoke their student visas if they complained or failed to comply with his demands…Students reportedly told [federal] investigators that classes “were not real” and that the main focus of the school was to have them working full-time at its campus and Miller’s home…In 2006, [Miller] was…detained on charges of lewdness and prostitution for exposing himself to an undercover cop in a bathhouse…

A bill designed to help New Orleans police crack down on prostitution is headed to Gov. Bobby Jindal’s desk…The legislation…makes it illegal…to solicit money or rides with the intent to exchange it for sex acts. Marjorie Esman [of the ACLU says the law]…does nothing that isn’t already covered by Louisiana law. Esman also had problems with an earlier version…[that banned] solicitation for any purpose…which…would have effectively outlawed panhandling…the bill gives police a mechanism to [harass] suspected prostitutes…enough so they might move on…

The US House of Representatives passed all five of the “sex trafficking” bills before it; most of them are the usual political boondoggles, but one creates a “criminal advertising” crime to stack on people being railroaded for “sex trafficking”, and the most dangerous one allows the federal government to give even more money to local cops for sex work stings under the guise of “fighting sex trafficking”. But the most shocking example of political hubris comes from Representative Randy Hultgren of Illinois, who seems to imagine that the U.S. Congress has the power to criminalize prostitution in foreign countries; he supports this with a lot of nonsense including the discredited Neumayer, Cho & Dreher report.

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The research commissioned by N Ireland’s Dept of Justice has begun; partly, it involves interviews/discussions between researchers and workers and clients. Lord Morrow doesn’t want to wait for the results of this research, apparently he finds it “unnecessary”.

Meanwhile, the UK is adding the fruits of illegal drugs and prostitution to the GDP. Unsurprisingly, the data being used is laughable. The numbers of women involved come from a London organisation, the earnings from Punternet, and the number of clients seen per week comes from Holland.

And, back in N Ireland, a pastor described Islam as “a doctrine spawned in Hell” among various other things; he was supported in this view by the First Minister, Peter Robinson who, like Lord Morrow, is a Democratic Unionist. Mr Robinson later made an “apology”, saying he had been misunderstood. Whores aren’t the only people being vilified here, we’re also into racism:

Someone help me out with something. What’s so wrong about enforcing an atmosphere of solemnity at public memorials?

The argument that the property is publicly owned by all – and so anyone should be able to do what they wish there really doesn’t hold water, because there are lots of publicly owned lands we don’t allow anyone to access. So public ownership doesn’t equate to universal public access … and if you can limit access, then the government should certainly be able to limit activities within these areas?

Second … having lived in Hawaii for over a decade – I was there when this issue occasionally came up at the Arizona Memorial. The memorial is a grave site – not all the bodies were recovered after the Japanese attack. The wreck of the Arizona still leaks oil to this day – you can observe it floating to the surface.

But we did have some issues with people “cutting up” and acting inappropriately at the memorial. Loud laughter, joking … etc.

And the NPS always nipped that in the bud … and I support that.

Dancing at the Jefferson Memorial? Well, in my opinion it’s kind of innocuous – Jefferson was one of the “cool” founding fathers after all. Then again, I can see where NPS fears the “slippery slope” that allowing such behavior could lead to … putting them into a position of trying to judge what fringe behavior is acceptable in that memorial – and what behaviors aren’t. They’d have to maintain an encyclopedia of those acceptable behaviors too … because an accepted “behavior” in one memorial wouldn’t necessarily be acceptable in another, depending on the nature of the memorial.

When Margaret Thatcher died, a lot of people said they wanted to “dance on her grave”, meaning that they were happy that she was dead, but did not celebrate her life—dancing for joy, if you like. It was a mark of disrespect. I’d guess it’s the same here. Of course, what you get in a Court is “law” not “justice”, and it’s usually not open for the Court to change precedents; Courts, at least the lower ones, are inherently conservative. The protesters did describe what they were doing as civil disobedience; even if you and I would think it an innocuous activity, any Court is likely to disapprove, and to uphold the status quo ante. Quite where the line is between peaceful protest and, say, daubing racist or nazi slogans on the Memorial is the sort of question that Courts really can’t easily answer.

Quite where the line is between peaceful protest and, say, daubing racist or nazi slogans on the Memorial is the sort of question that Courts really can’t easily answer.

I don’t see why. One is vandalism and leaves permanent damage; the other does no damage except hurt feelings.

It’s reasonable for the law to keep people from disrupting a funeral while it is going on, but once it’s over, a public park belongs to people of all views, not just those who respect the purpose for which it was built.

Dancing on a grave as a statement of hatred is rude, but that doesn’t mean the government has any business punishing people for it.

Dancing on a grave as a statement of hatred is rude, but that doesn’t mean the government has any business punishing people for it.

Government has to do SOME things – otherwise, guys like me handle the troublemakers. I’ll tell you flat out – what the government does to these freaks is NOTHING compared to what I’d do to them. So take your pick … a guy goes into the Arizona memorial to urinate on the wreck and the government arrests him and slaps him on the wrist – or I put him in the hospital (and become a HERO for doing it).

Re. Alyssa Funke: I hope a head rolls for that. Nobody should be “outing” other people’s sex lives — though of course with the Internet making it ever easier to do, in the end we’re going to have to teach people to tolerate sexual diversity. (Banning discrimination against people for their sexual behavior would also be rightful in my view, but is unlikely to work for the same reasons most other discrimination laws don’t, and would give government even more power it would abuse.)

Re: the course of a disease. I heard the good news coming from France. Seeing the current situation, we can hope that the minister who supported this law, Najat Vallaud-Belkacem, will quietly drop her project (she just got promoted – God knows why! – and has other more urgent stuff to do now, plus her party is in tatters after abysmal results at the local and European elections). And the last time I heard about the follow up of the law at the Senate, the Socialists group leader (since then promoted to Minister) said that he hoped he wouldn’t have to lose time and energy with this “hot potato”. The decision of the CNCDH can make a difference since “the Left” (as those pseudo-socialists call themselves) sees itself as “the good guys” and they currently suffer from a mass deficit of credibility with their traditional voters. It may influence them to brush that law discreetly under the carpet (hopefully)!

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